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The Book of Were-Wolves
by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
This full length classic werewolf reference
book is presented courtesy of MythologyWeb.
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CHAPTER VII
JEAN GRENIER
One fine afternoon in the spring, some village girls were tending
their sheep on the sand-dunes which intervene between the vast
forests of pine covering the greater portion of the present department
of Landes in the south of France, and the sea.
The brightness of the sky, the freshness of the air puffing
up off the blue twinkling Bay of Biscay, the hum or song of the
wind as it made rich music among the pines which stood like a
green uplifted wave on the East, the beauty of the sand-hills
speckled with golden cistus, or patched with gentian-blue, by
the low growing Gremille couchée, the charm of
the forest-skirts, tinted variously with the foliage of cork-trees,
pines, and acacia, the latter in full bloom, a pile of rose-coloured
or snowy flowers -- all conspired to fill the peasant maidens
with joy, and to make their voices rise in song and laughter,
which rung merrily over the hills, and through the dark avenues
of evergreen trees.
Now a gorgeous butterfly attracted their attention, then a
flight of quails skimming the surface.
"Ah!" exclaimed Jacquiline Auzun, "Ah, if I
had my stilts and bats, I would strike the little birds down,
and we should have a fine supper."
"Now, if they would fly ready cooked into one's mouth,
as they do in foreign parts!" said another girl.
"Have you got any new clothes for the S. Jean?"
asked a third; "my mother has laid by to purchase me a smart
cap with gold lace."
"You will turn the head of Etienne altogether, Annette!"
said Jeanne Gaboriant. "But what is the matter with the
sheep?"
She asked because the sheep which had been quietly browsing
before her, on reaching a small depression in the dune,
had started away as though frightened at something. At the same
time one of the dogs began to growl and show his fangs.
The girls ran to the spot, and saw a little fall in the ground,
in which, seated on a log of fir, was a boy of thirteen. The
appearance of the lad was peculiar. His hair was of a tawny red
and thickly matted, falling over his shoulders and completely
covering his narrow brow. His small pale-grey eyes twinkled with
an expression of horrible ferocity and cunning, from deep sunken
hollows. The complexion was of a dark olive colour; the teeth
were strong and white, and the canine teeth protruded over the
lower lip when the mouth was closed. The boy's hands were large
and powerful, the nails black and pointed like bird's talons.
He was ill clothed, and seemed to be in the most abject poverty.
The few garments he had on him were in tatters, and through the
rents the emaciation of his limbs was plainly visible.
The girls stood round him, half frightened and much surprised,
but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed
into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range of his glittering
white fangs.
"Well, my maidens," said he in a harsh voice, "which
of you is the prettiest, I should like to know; can you decide
among you?"
"What do you want to know for?" asked Jeanne Gaboriant,
the eldest of the girls, aged eighteen, who took upon herself
to be spokesman for the rest.
"Because I shall marry the prettiest," was the answer.
"Ah!" said Jeanne jokingly; "that is if she
will have you, which is not very likely, as we none of us know
you, or anything about you."
"I am the son of a priest," replied the boy curtly.
"Is that why you look so dingy and black?"
"No, I am dark-coloured, because I wear a wolf-skin sometimes."
"A wolf-skin!" echoed the girl; "and pray who
gave it you?"
"One called Pierre Labourant."
"There is no man of that name hereabouts. Where does
he live?"
A scream of laughter mingled with howls, and breaking into
strange gulping bursts of fiendlike merriment from the strange
boy.
The little girls recoiled, and the youngest took refuge behind
Jeanne.
"Do you want to know Pierre Labourant, lass? Hey, he
is a man with an iron chain about his neck, which he is ever
engaged in gnawing. Do you want to know where he lives, lass?
Ha, in a place of gloom and fire, where there are many companions,
some seated on iron chairs, burning, burning; others stretched
on glowing beds, burning too. Some cast men upon blazing coals,
others roast men before fierce flames, others again plunge them
into caldrons of liquid fire."
The girls trembled and looked at each other with scared faces,
and then again at the hideous being which crouched before them.
"You want to know about the wolf-skin cape?" continued
he. "Pierre Labourant gave me that; he wraps it round me,
and every Monday, Friday, and Sunday, and for about an hour at
dusk every other day, I am a wolf, a were-wolf. I have killed
dogs and drunk their blood; but little girls taste better, their
flesh is tender and sweet, their blood rich and warm. I have
eaten many a maiden, as I have been on my raids together with
my nine companions. I am a were-wolf! Ah, ha! If the sun were
to set I would soon fall on one of you and make a meal of you!"
Again he burst into one of his frightful paroxysms of laughter,
and the girls unable to endure it any longer, fled with precipitation.
Near the village of S. Antoine de Pizon, a little girl of
the name of Marguerite Poirier, thirteen years old, was in the
habit of tending her sheep, in company with a lad of the same
age, whose name was Jean Grenier. The same lad whom Jeanne Gaboriant
had questioned.
The little girl often complained to her parents of the conduct
of the boy: she said that he frightened her with his horrible
stories; but her father and mother thought little of her complaints,
till one day she returned home before her usual time so thoroughly
alarmed that she had deserted her flock. Her parents now took
the matter up and investigated it. Her story was as follows:
Jean had often told her that he had sold himself to the devil,
and that he had acquired the power of ranging the country after
dusk, and sometimes in broad day, in the form of a wolf. He had
assured her that he had killed and devoured many dogs, but that
he found their flesh less palatable than the flesh of little
girls, which he regarded as a supreme delicacy. He had told her
that this had been tasted by him not unfrequently, but he had
specified only two instances: in one he had eaten as much as
he could, and had thrown the rest to a wolf, which had come up
during the repast. In the other instance he had bitten to death
another little girl, had lapped her blood, and, being in a famished
condition at the time, had devoured every portion of her, with
the exception of the arms and shoulders.
The child told her parents, on the occasion of her return
home in a fit of terror, that she had been guiding her sheep
as usual, but Grenier had not been present. Hearing a rustle
in the bushes she had looked round, and a wild beast bad leaped
upon her, and torn her clothes on her left side with its sharp
fangs. She added that she had defended herself lustily with her
shepherd's staff, and had beaten the creature off. It had then
retreated a few paces, had seated itself on its hind legs like
a dog when it is begging, and had regarded her with such a look
of rage, that she had fled in terror. She described the animal
as resembling a wolf, but as being shorter and stouter; its hair
was red, its tail stumpy, and the head smaller than that of a
genuine wolf.
The statement of the child produced general consternation
in the parish. It was well known that several little girls had
vanished in a most mysterious way of late, and the parents of
these little ones were thrown into an agony of terror lest their
children had become the prey of the wretched boy accused by Marguerite
Poirier. The case was now taken up by the authorities and brought
before the parliament of Bordeaux.
The investigation which followed was as complete as could
be desired.
Jean Grenier was the son of a poor labourer in the village
of S. Antoine do Pizon, and not the son of a priest, as he had
asserted. Three months before his seizure he had left home, and
had been with several masters doing odd work, or wandering about
the country begging. He had been engaged several times to take
charge of the flocks belonging to farmers, and had as often been
discharged for neglect of his duties. The lad exhibited no reluctance
to communicate all he knew about himself, and his statements
were tested one by one, and were often proved to be correct.
The story he related of himself before the court was as follows:--
"When I was ten or eleven years old, my neighbour, Duthillaire,
introduced me, in the depths of the forest, to a M. de la Forest,
a black man, who signed me with his nail, and then gave to me
and Duthillaire a salve and a wolf-skin. From that time have
I run about the country as a wolf.
"The charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct. My intention
was to have killed and devoured her, but she kept me off with
a stick. I have only killed one dog, a white one, and I did not
drink its blood."
When questioned touching the children, whom he said he had
killed and eaten as a wolf, he allowed that he had once entered
an empty house on the way between S. Coutras and S. Anlaye, in
a small village, the name of which he did not remember, and had
found a child asleep in its cradle; and as no one was within
to hinder him, he dragged the baby out of its cradle, carried
it into the garden, leaped the hedge, and devoured as much of
it as satisfied his hunger. What remained he had given to a wolf.
In the parish of S. Antoine do Pizon he had attacked a little
girl, as she was keeping sheep. She was dressed in a black frock;
he did not know her name. He tore her with his nails and teeth,
and ate her. Six weeks before his capture he had fallen upon
another child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In
Eparon he had assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and
would have killed the beast, had not the owner come out with
his rapier in his hand.
Jean said that he had the wolf-skin in his possession, and
that he went out hunting for children, at the command of his
master, the Lord of the Forest. Before transformation he smeared
himself with the salve, which be preserved in a small pot, and
hid his clothes in the thicket.
He usually ran his courses from one to two hours in the day,
when the moon was at the wane, but very often he made his expeditions
at night. On one occasion he had accompanied Duthillaire, but
they had killed no one.
He accused his father of having assisted him, and of possessing
a wolf-skin; he charged him also with having accompanied him
on one occasion, when he attacked and ate a girl in the village
of Grilland, whom he had found tending a flock of geese. He said
that his stepmother was separated from his father. He believed
the reason to be, because she had seen him once vomit the paws
of a dog and the fingers of a child. He added that the Lord of
the Forest had strictly forbidden him to bite the thumb-nail
of his left hand, which nail was thicker and longer than the
others, and had warned him never to lose sight of it, as long
as he was in his were-wolf disguise.
Duthillaire was apprehended, and the father of Jean Grenier
himself claimed to be heard by examination.
The account given by the father and stepmother of Jean coincided
in many particulars with the statements made by their son.
The localities where Grenier declared he had fallen on children
were identified, the times when he said the deeds had been done
accorded with the dates given by the parents of the missing little
ones, when their losses had occurred.
The wounds which Jean affirmed that he had made, and the manner
in which he had dealt them, coincided with the descriptions given
by the children he had assaulted.
He was confronted with Marguerite Poirier, and he singled
her out from among five other girls, pointed to the still open
gashes in her body, and stated that he had made them with his
teeth, when he attacked her in wolf-form, and she had beaten
him off with a stick. He described an attack he had made on a
little boy whom he would have slain, had not a man come to the
rescue, and exclaimed, "I'll have you presently."
The man who saved the child was found, and proved to be the
uncle of the rescued lad, and he corroborated the statement of
Grenier, that he had used the words mentioned above.
Jean was then confronted with his father. He now began to
falter in his story, and to change his statements. The examination
had lasted long, and it was seen that the feeble intellect of
the boy was wearied out, so the case was adjourned. When next
confronted with the elder Grenier, Jean told his story as at
first, without changing it in any important particular.
The fact of Jean Grenier having killed and eaten several children,
and of his having attacked and wounded others, with intent to
take their life, were fully established; but there was no proof
whatever of the father having had the least hand in any of the
murders, so that he was dismissed the court without a shadow
of guilt upon him.
The only witness who corroborated the assertion of Jean that
he changed his shape into that of a wolf was Marguerite Poirier.
Before the court gave judgment, the first president of assize,
in an eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft
and diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly
stated that the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility
of the child, who was so dull and idiotic--that children of seven
or eight years old have usually a larger amount of reason than
he. The president went on to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy
were mere hallucinations, and that the change of shape existed
only in the disorganized brain of the insane, consequently it
was not a crime which could be punished. The tender age of the
boy must be taken into consideration, and the utter neglect of
his education and moral development. The court sentenced Grenier
to perpetual imprisonment within the walls of a monastery at
Bordeaux, where he might be instructed in his Christian and moral
obligations; but any attempt to escape would be punished with
death.
A pleasant companion for the monks! a promising pupil for
them to instruct! No sooner was he admitted into the precincts
of the religious house, than he ran frantically about the cloister
and gardens upon all fours, and finding a heap of bloody and
raw offal, fell upon it and devoured it in an incredibly short
space of time.
Delancre visited him seven years after, and found him diminutive
in stature, very shy, and unwilling to look any one in the face.
His eyes were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding;
his nails black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely
barren; he seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things. He
related his story to Delancre, and told him how he had run about
formerly in the woods as a wolf, and he said that he still felt
a craving for raw flesh, especially for that of little girls,
which he said was delicious, and he added that but for his confinement
it would not be long before he tasted it again. He said that
the Lord of the Forest had visited him twice in the prison, but
that he had driven him off with the sign of the cross. The account
be then gave of his murders coincided exactly with what had come
out in his trial; and beside this, his story of the compact he
had made with the Black One, and the manner in which his transformation
was effected, also coincided with his former statements.
He died at the age of twenty, after an imprisonment of seven
years, shortly after Delancre's visit. [DELANCRE: Tableau
de l'Iinconstance, p 305.]
In the two cases of Roulet and Grenier the courts referred
the whole matter of Lycanthropy, or animal transformation, to
its true and legitimate cause, an aberration of the brain. From
this time medical men seem to have regarded it as a form of mental
malady to be brought under their treatment, rather than as a
crime to be punished by law. But it is very fearful to contemplate
that there may still exist persons in the world filled with a
morbid craving for human blood, which is ready to impel them
to commit the most horrible atrocities, should they escape the
vigilante of their guards, or break the bars of the madhouse
which restrains them.
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